Day 4

Even though our room is very quiet (and somewhat dark due to a lack of natural light) we both woke up early this morning. Breakfast wasn’t served until 6.30am so we relaxed until then and ended up being the first people at breakfast. The breakfast wasn’t too bad although there weren't a lot of options for juices or vegetarians. After Ted left to go to the gym during breakfast, I noticed my phone was missing and thought Ted may have picked it up accidentally before leaving. As it turned out, he had sat back at the wrong table during breakfast (which I hadn’t noticed either) meaning all our belongings were still sitting idly on a table nearby!

Clearly Ted’s lack of direction continued because he then went back to the wrong room (606 instead of 306), and woke us some poor Chinese man who was wondering who was ringing his doorbell! After getting ready, we walked down to the departure stop for the bus which, according to its itinerary, visited most of the places we wanted to see. Since we had some time before departure, we crossed the bridge across Hoàn Kiếm Lake to the Ngoc Son Temple, which has a tower and pavilions dedicated to the national hero.

The bus tour was very handy, although the audio commentary was inaccurate sometimes, as it often didn’t match the place where you were. Either way, we still got a great overview of the city. We did the complete round trip first before disembarking back at the original stop to do the tour again, this time leaving the bus at the stops which looked most interesting. Rather than sit on the bus waiting for it to depart again, we walked across the street to Highland Coffee which was located in a high rise building right in the city square. The coffee was plain, but the view was great.

We first decided to stop at St. Joseph Cathedral, although it wasn’t visible from the bus route. We found out later we should’ve headed right instead of left as we spent a good amount of time trying to find it! Even though most of the locals couldn’t speak English, Ted was able to use the photo from the brochure to ask, and ultimately find, the cathedral (including asking at a nearby hotel).

Whilst in the area, we decided to have lunch at a nearby restaurant, so we settled on a Vietnamese restaurant named Vivienne which had a direct view of the cathedral (slightly painful when the bells tolled on the hour)! Clearly we paid for location though as the cost of the lunch was more than twice of the pho we had last night. It wasn’t until later that I saw it has the dubious distinction of being ranked #2487 of the 2490 restaurants in Hanoi.

After re boarding the bus, we went to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum which covered a huge area of land which we needed to walk around just to reach the entrance. The grounds were interesting but not particularly amazing, although I thought the mausoleum itself was impressive. We weren’t able to get close enough to the Presidential Palace to get a good photo as the security guard shooed us away, so the best we could do was one from a distance. We saw the Changing of the Guard ceremony too before rejoining our bus tour.

We disembarked next at the Chùa Trấn Quốc Pagoda, which is located on a busy highway. If we thought that crossing the street in downtown Hanoi was terrifying enough, crossing this highway felt like suicide. We made the mistake of wearing shorts today which meant we couldn’t enter the pagoda, but all was not lost. There was a pub across the road so we had a lukewarm beer and soft drink whilst waiting for the next tour bus to arrive.

After the pagoda we returned to the original embarkation point and our hotel room to relax, before deciding to treat ourselves to a massage at a nearby business who often tried to get us in when we would walk past. To be honest the massage was a bit unusual! Most of it was enjoyable, but towards the end they did some weird jerking movements which included cracking Ted’s neck and twisting my back. They also brought a complete stranger into our room for a massage whilst we were still getting ours!

For dinner, we weren’t feeling like Asian food so we found a Mexican restaurant which was simple and very nice. The bus ticket we’d bought entitled us to a nighttime tour of the city but when we boarded the bus, I realised I’d left the ticket back in the room. I was very disappointed until Ted went to the nearby ticket office and asked the lady for another ticket, providing proof that we had purchased one that morning. She gave us each a spare ticket and we were on our way!

We didn’t disembark the whole tour, mainly because most the sights were closed and it was just wonderful seeing the city at night. I did make sure I sat lower in my seat this time though as a tree branch nearly decapitated me on the previous tour! When we arrived back to the original stop, we looked through some clothing shops before coming back to our hotel. Another day in Hanoi tomorrow!Read more